


Alienation

by Moraith



Category: Metroid Series
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 17:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12635808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moraith/pseuds/Moraith
Summary: The Chozo are extinct, or might as well be. It doesn't matter much that there's one left if she's really a human.A character study of a Samus who embraced her Chozo identity and has to cope with the implications of being the last survivor of a culture she never felt like she fully belonged to.





	Alienation

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by and written for my dear, dear friend Cynthia. Find her art (including some of this very Samus!) on tumblr at cynthiadrawssometimes.tumblr.com and maybe send her some love while you're at it!

Samus was never a Chozo; not really. Even with the DNA splicing their advanced medical technology allowed for, it was impossible to disguise the fact that she was originally human. Though she could point to her teeth and her voice and the soft downy feathers growing from the back of her neck, her thin delicate flesh and limp stringy strands of pale hair would forever mark her as something alien.

When she was very young, Old Bird would wipe away her tears—another unbearable sign of her alien biology—and assure her no one would doubt her when she was older and stronger and could wear the armor of a Chozo warrior like she always dreamed.

During the long summer days on Zebes, while the adults were off at work, other children jeered at her, spitting the word human like a dirty insult. They pecked at her arms and pulled her hair and shrieked at her with a volume her underdeveloped human vocal cords couldn't hope to match. She insisted, when Old Bird and Grey Voice arrived to scold her and take her home, that fighting one-on-five was invaluable training for when she became the strongest warrior on Zebes one day.

Old Bird rumbled out an indulgent laugh and patted her head softly. Grey Voice shook his head in stern disapproval and started lecturing, like he always did. Samus tuned him out and concentrated on the sharp points of Old Bird's talons on her scalp. She imagined herself looking just like him, covered in feathers and armed to the teeth, ready to defend her family and the rest of the galaxy with it. She let Grey Voice's words wash over her and saw herself running free through a jungle in a far-off land, seeing things no one had seen before and going places no one else would dare go.

As she grew, she did everything in her power to distance herself from her human origins until the word felt as dirty in her mouth as it sounded in the beaks of her friends. She trained her body relentlessly in preparation for her training as a warrior. No matter what she did, she couldn't reach the same levels of strength and agility as her peers, but every little bit had to count. Grey Voice was impressed with her efforts, for once. He offered her an opportunity to catch up with the rest of the fledglings her age; a technological augmentation that would help her body better adapt to Zebes's harsh environment. It would put an enormous physical and psychological strain on her, or so Old Bird said, and she didn't have to use it if she didn't want to. She rejected the notion of giving up on it outright.

The three of them agreed that she would be given her new skin at the coming of age ceremony coming up only a few short months later. She would shed the last of her past and become an adult with the rest of her peers.

The ceremony happened in the same old temple she played in when she was too young for school. It was too familiar and too nostalgic for the ceremony to have the weight it was supposed to. Old Bird was standing before the crowd of eager bright-eyed teenagers, giving a speech about tradition and history and the responsibility that comes with being an adult while his audience elbowed each other and spoke in hushed whispers about how they were going to get out of here and go exploring as soon as they could get away with it. A wide goofy grin spread across Samus's face and she could practically hear Grey Voice admonishing her for her irreverence.

Each Chozo was called by name, then led up a staircase to an altar in the center of the temple grounds. They would recite a few words, and Old Bird would say something of his own, then they would take a drink from a bowl of water taken from a secret spring hidden somewhere deep in Maridia and go on their way.

Samus's palms were sweating when her name was called, which felt far more irreverent than anything she could have possibly have said or done during the ceremony short of burning the temple to the ground. Old Bird's assistant led her up to the altar, where Old Bird himself was waiting. She squawked out her part of the incantation, well-worn and familiar from hours and hours of unnecessary over-practice. Old Bird finished the ceremony with enough pride and fondness to make Samus embarrassed on his behalf. She drank from the bowl, then, like magic, her Power Suit activated.

It was excruciating. Despite the adaptations, it was Chozo technology. Samus could feel the armor trying to contort her body into a more proper Chozo shape. The hard metal twisted around her hands, reluctant to shape itself into gloves suited for five thin fragile fingers. She squeezed her eyes shut against the tears burning behind her eyelids and laughed until she was gasping for air. She stumbled away from the altar on trembling unsteady legs, more exhilarated and more terrified than she thought possible. She never felt more acutely like an outsider than in that moment, with her body that was very much hers but would never ever be theirs.

The pain stopped after a few weeks, though Samus could never quite tell if it was because she had learned to use the armor better or because she had simply gotten used to the strain. She learned to maneuver in the heavy armor with the same agility as she had without it, with more strength and confidence. She learned to fight the way the warriors did, though she privately thought the lessons she learned from her dirty no-holds-barred scraps in the mud with the other trainees would take her farther in real combat.

It became more obvious than ever during combat training that Samus wasn't like the rest of the Chozo. Her weapons had to be fitted with different firing mechanisms to compensate for potential bruising in her arms. Traditional arm cannons had too much kick for a human arm, thinner and more fragile than the bony Chozo wings, covered with a thick coat of protective feathers. Hers was a lighter model, with less power and reduced firing speed. She barely noticed the difference until she had to join in on a real fight.

An earthquake drove some of the more dangerous wildlife out of the underground depths and up to the surface. The warrior trainees were sent to dispatch them before they got to any crops or, in the worst-case scenario, injured anyone. Samus's technique was on par with her peers, if not more precise and more advanced, but she was slower at getting the job done no matter what she did.

She told her instructors the next day that she wanted her arm amputated. It was something Grey Voice had mentioned once, off-hand; her arms would never be able to handle the tech, but they could probably replace them with something that could. Her teachers protested, of course, but she wore them down. It was a small sacrifice to make, she told them, for the ability to keep them all safe. All she wanted was to have the power to protect her family.

She didn't often bring up her biological family's deaths. She barely remembered them and felt no particular attachment to them. Though she didn't doubt that the disaster had had a strong effect on her, she couldn't make enough of a connection to keep up the act that she had a deep conscious hurt about it. In this case, however, it was too good of a bargaining chip to give up. Her teachers shared concerned looks and hemmed and hawed, but eventually relented and allowed her to modify her body to accommodate a proper arm cannon.

Waking up in the hospital with half her right arm missing was the best moment of her life. She sat through the mandatory recovery period, fidgeting and growing more antsy by the moment until she felt like she would explode from pure anticipation at any moment. As soon as her doctors gave her the all-clear, she rushed to the academy and picked up her own custom arm cannon. It fit her like a dream. The deep satisfaction when she fitted it into its socket for the first time was unlike anything she'd ever felt.

She adjusted to the new arm cannon in no time at all. Within a month she could barely remember what it was like to have another hand in its place. She finished her training at the top of her class a few years later and became as close to a fully-fledged Chozo warrior as she was ever going to be. Though she couldn't quite shake the feeling that she was an alien intruding on territory that wasn't hers at the graduation ceremony, her pride easily overshadowed her doubt.

She left Zebes for the Federation in search of excitement. Though she loved her planet and her family dearly, wanderlust called her away to the unknown reaches of space with a pull she couldn't hope to resist. Grey Voice remarked that she must be happy to get a chance to be among her kind and it struck her like a knife to the gut. She couldn't bring herself to ask if he was kidding then, when the wound was still so fresh. Old Bird wished her well and ran his talons gently through her hair when she was on her way. He assured her she always had a place among the Chozo on Zebes whenever she wished to return.

She traveled the galaxy, chasing down criminals and discovering new worlds and slowly but surely making a name for herself as a hero. She felt more like an alien among her human comrades than she ever did with the Chozo, which was a comfort. When she heard their soft words and saw their strange overcooked foods, she knew in her heart that she wasn't one of them. Maybe, she thought, she really was Chozo, and the persistent feeling of alienation was nothing more than a quirk of her personality.

By the time she wished to return, Zebes was gone. The planet was still there, but that meant nothing. Old Bird and Grey Voice and Samus's teachers and friends and everyone else she knew in her childhood were dead. Not missing, not evacuated, not living on some far-off planet with extended family, but dead. It happened all at once and nobody knew why. The Chozo empire had a small population after all these millennia, but was ancient and far-flung and somehow all the survivors dropped dead overnight.

Samus's coworkers, not always in the Federation now that she had left their ranks, talked about it as if it were a distant curiosity, a mystery to be solved. It took all the willpower Samus had not to tear their throats out for it. The authorities declared the Chozo extinct before long. Samus didn't have it in her to argue. She could march up to the Federation's President and show off her Power Armor and scream the Chozo songs she grew up with as much as she pleased; by the books she was human, and there was no way that was going to change now that the real Chozo were gone.

She had to return to the husk of Zebes eventually. There was a new and dangerous life form found there that was threatening to spread to the rest of the system. Though every nerve in Samus's body was screaming at her that she didn't have to right to go back after everything that had happened, her sense of duty won out. The Federation asked her to do the job because no one else could handle it. She didn't doubt they were right. (She read somewhere, once, that the Chozo were known for their strong senses of duty. But she also read that they were kind and gentle pacifists, so maybe that meant nothing.)

She landed on the surface of her planet and wandered the ruins of her home as if it were any other mission. Scattered here and there among the achingly familiar rubble were short written passages carved into stone which must have been relatively new. They were prophecies. Our human warrior will return to save us, they said; if we wait for her, she will return. After the first dozen, Samus's eyes began to glaze over. The Fledgling, the human, the Messiah, someday she'll be back and we'll be free from this torment. As she invaded the Space Pirate headquarters and destroyed the Metroids that brought her home to ruins along with the Pirates' leaders, all in a dizzy haze, she imagined Old Bird and Grey Voice carving their own desperate prayers to their human savior into the walls.

She took fewer and fewer jobs after that. The work of a hero was more trouble than it was worth. Being called the galaxy's savior was little more than a cruel joke when she saw the crumbling remains of the family she abandoned around every corner.

The Chozo were extinct, or so everyone said. Samus Aran, the human galactic hero turned bounty hunter turned hero again a thousand times over, whistled old Chozo lullabies to herself in the dead of night and wondered if she had the right to tell them they were wrong.


End file.
